Saying Stephen Hawking Is "Free" From His Wheelchair Is Ableist

In this op-ed, Keah Brown explains why certain language being used to talk about Stephen Hawking's death is ableist.

When I die, I hope that I am remembered for the work I have done. I hope that all of the times I have discussed ableism, joy, grief, sadness, and joy is what people remember.

The work I do has everything to do with the fight for proper representation — something I did not see a lot of while growing up. If I saw disabled people in a film, they were so angry about their disability and body that by the end of the movie, they were granted their wish of dying. As a young girl, I internalized that fate and figured I should want to as well. I’ll spare you the details, but it took years, tears, and real effort to get out of that mind-set and into a healthier and happier one. A lot of the effort was in turning away from the media representation and into myself and the people who loved me. When I started my journey, I wrote down a list of names of people in the limelight who are disabled and examples of proper, positive representation for people with disabilities. Stephen Hawking was at the top of my list.

I won’t sit here and tell you that I idolized him as a child or knew everything about him. I can tell you that his passing on March 14 left me heartbroken for a variety of reasons. The first being that the world has lost one of the smartest and most notable intellectuals we have and will ever have. Stephen Hawking was a professor, cosmologist, theoretical physicist, father, friend, and much more. But he was also the first representation I had of someone thriving and changing the world with a disability — of being respected and loved with a disability. I can imagine that it was not easy. I know firsthand that disability never is. I live with cerebral palsy, and I find myself frustrated most when my body is in pain. Still, my disability is a part of me and Stephen’s was a part of him. Knowing that, the other reason I am heartbroken over his death is because of aspects of the response to it. When the news broke that he had died, social media was flooded with condolences, as it should have, but tacked on the end of these messages were sentiments that Stephen was “free” from physical disability, along with pictures of him standing, out of his chair, and gazing at the stars.

You might be wondering what is wrong with that. Everything. Stephen himself said, “My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in.” So why is everyone so eager to erase his disability in discussions of his life’s work? Odds are, it's because disability makes our society uncomfortable, so much so that instead of embracing him for all that he was to able-bodied and disabled people alike, upon his death, people on social media are focusing on how “good” he must feel outside of his body.

Sentiments like this are ableist and harmful. It tells other disabled people that we should be excited for the opportunity to be "free" of our bodies, but it also reduces Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest intellectuals ever, to his disability and nothing more.

The fact of the matter is that Stephen did all of his amazing work with his disability — not in spite of it. To erase that fact of his life as we mourn the loss of him in our world is to ignore part of who he was simply because it wasn’t something that could be easily understood. He did not need to be free of his disability and wheelchair to change the world, so why must he be freed of it now that he has passed on?

Stephen Hawking was a hero to many, and he deserves to be respected and regarded as one in death as much as he was in life.